Peter May - Chinese Whispers

‘Sounds like it could put you guys out of business.’

‘Oh, I doubt it,’ Hart said. ‘MERMER has very specific and narrow applications. It requires a lot of expensive equipment and meticulous preparation.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Speaking of which, we don’t want to be late.’ He signalled the waitress for the check and a gaggle of girls rushed to get their jackets from the stand.

As they rose from the table, Lyang said, ‘Are you busy this afternoon, Margaret?’

Margaret laughed. ‘Lyang, these days I’m never busy.’

Lyang said, ‘I’m going for a foot massage later. Why don’t you join me?’

‘A foot massage?’ Margaret was incredulous. She had seen the signs for foot massage springing up all over the city. It was the latest fashion. But it seemed a little decadent.

‘It’s the most wonderful way of relaxing I know,’ Lyang said.

‘It’s not so easy to relax with an eleven-month-old baby demanding your attention twenty-four hours a day.’

‘That’s what’s so good about the place I use,’ Lyang said. ‘They have a crèche. You can forget baby for an hour and a half.’ She smiled. ‘Go on, treat yourself.’

‘On you go,’ Li said. ‘And when you learn how it’s done you can practise on me.’

Margaret gave him a look.

As a waitress handed Li his coat, Qian’s book slipped from the pocket and fell to the floor.

Lyang stooped to pick it up and raised an eyebrow as she read the title. ‘ The Murders of Jack the Ripper .’

Hart laughed. ‘What’s this? Becoming a student of unsolved murders, Li?’

Li smiled reluctantly. ‘I hope not,’ he said.

But Margaret was looking at him curiously. ‘Jack the Ripper?’

Li sighed. There was no avoiding an explanation. ‘I take it you know who he is?’

‘Of course. The Ripper murders were probably the first documented case of serial killings anywhere in the world.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m no expert on the subject, but there can’t be many people who haven’t heard the name Jack the Ripper. He’s kind of like the bogey man.’

Li nodded solemnly and turned to Hart. ‘There’s been a spate of particularly gruesome murders in the city during the last few weeks.’ He glanced at Margaret. ‘We think the killer’s copycatting the Ripper murders.’

Margaret found her interest engaged. ‘Who in Beijing would know enough of that kind of detail to be able to replicate them?’

Li held up the book. ‘Someone who’s read this.’

Margaret took the book and looked at the Chinese characters with frustration. She said, ‘I wish I’d taken the trouble to learn to read Chinese.’

‘It’s only a translation,’ Li said. ‘You could probably get the English original on the internet.’

‘Professional interest aroused?’ Hart asked.

‘Of course,’ Margaret said. ‘Wouldn’t you have liked to wire up some of the suspects and bamboozle them with your parlour tricks?’

He grinned. ‘Well, if you’d done the autopsies, Margaret, I’m sure you’d have provided me with ample ammunition to extract a confession.’ He turned to Li. ‘Maybe you should get Margaret working on this one, Li Yan.’

‘I’ve retired,’ Margaret said simply, and she lifted Li Jon from his chair and turned out of their private room into the gloom of the inner restaurant.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences was in a six-storey grey-tile building off Sanlihi Lu, facing west towards Yuyuantan Park, and flanked by the Ministry of Finance and the Chinese Institute of Seismology. Hart drew his car up on to the sidewalk and parked facing steps leading up to glass doors. A hanging white banner announced in bold characters that this was the Presidium of Chinese Scholars . A Chinese flag whipped and snapped in the wind and cast its shadow on the green-tile roof above the main entrance.

On the fifth floor, five of the most senior officers in the Ministry of Public Security sat around a large reception room, drinking green tea and smoking. Vertical blinds shielded the room from the sun as it swung westwards. One wall was taken up by a mural depicting a tranquil scene from an ancient Chinese garden. Everyone, with the exception of Li, was in uniform and he realised immediately that he was in breach of etiquette.

‘I’ll leave you to it. Good luck,’ Hart said, and he ducked out the door. What had been an animated conversation fell away into silence as the occupants of the room regarded the newcomer. Procurator General Meng Yongli sat stiffly, with his hat on the chair beside him. ‘Punctual as always, Li,’ he said, his tone rigid with disapproval.

‘You might have taken the time to change into your uniform, Section Chief.’ This from the Deputy Minister of Public Security, Wei Peng. He was a small, squat man with the demeanour of a frog, and he enjoyed exercising his power. ‘We are here representing the Ministry today.’

‘Give the man a break.’ Beijing’s Deputy Commissioner of Police, Cao Xu, was so relaxed he was almost liquid. His hat had been tossed on the low table in front of him, and he was slouched in his seat, with one leg up over the arm of it. He was a man who, at one time, had been destined for the top. A predecessor of Li’s in the hotseat at Section One, he had looked set for the Commissioner’s job when a past indiscretion had caught up with him and he was promoted sideways to deputy. His progress on the career ladder was at an end and so he had no need to toady to his superiors. It made him something of a loose cannon. He took a long pull at his cigarette. ‘After all, the Section Chief is up to his eyes in murder, isn’t that right, Chief?’

‘And has our hero cracked the case yet?’ Beijing Police Commissioner Zhu Gan’s use of the word hero was laden with sarcasm. He was a tall, lean man with rimless glasses who viewed Li through them with patent dislike. He was not one of Li’s champions, and had made clear to him on numerous occasions his distaste for the award ceremony scheduled for the Great Hall of the People that evening. In his view it was, he had told Li, a dangerous return to the cult of personality. Li might have agreed with him, had he been allowed. But in almost the same breath Commissioner Zhu had told him that since the edict had come from the Minister himself neither of them was in a position to raise objections.

‘What developments, Li?’ The slight build of the older man who sat sandwiched between the Procurator General and the Deputy Minister in no way reflected his status. As Director General of the Political Department, Yan Bo pulled plenty of clout. Li recognised him, but had not had any previous dealings with him.

Li looked at the faces expectantly awaiting his response. He did not feel that this was the occasion to share with them the news that their killer was modelling himself on Jack the Ripper. Nor did he feel like explaining that the reason for his failure to change into uniform was that he had been unavoidably detained by lunch. ‘I’ve just come from an interview with the dead girl’s mother,’ he said. Which was not entirely untrue. But he wondered if it would have passed Hart’s polygraph test.

‘She’s the fourth, isn’t she?’ said Deputy Cao taking another pull on his cigarette.

‘That’s right,’ Li said. ‘And probably the worst case of mutilation I’ve seen. Not only did he hack her face to pieces, but he cut her open and made off with her uterus and her left kidney.’ His words conjured images for them that they would, perhaps, have preferred not to envisage so soon after lunch, and they were greeted with silence. Li added, ‘I could have done without being here at all this afternoon.’

Commissioner Zhu said dismissively, ‘I’m sure your team can manage without you for a few hours, Section Chief.’